Many moons ago I purchased a Anytone AT5189 TX (4m) but never used it up until now. I have just put a dummy load and Bird Thro line wattmeter on it and oh dear the result is/was very poor.

Hi power should be 25w but is only 10 watts
Low power should be 5w but is just 1.5 watts

I have done lots of search's on line to no avail wonder if you have any ideas. I am wondering if the power could be changed in the firmware via software and maybe the previous owner had set it himself to 10 watts ??

Yes of course it does have 3 power settings as you say I didn't bother with the Middle and thought Hi and Lo would be a perfect test. Yes agree a FR would be a good idea however that was the first thing I did I even tried a Factory "Setting" as well as "restore" in desperation but to no avail.

Anybody want to buy a AT5189 ideal for the Novice license holder, only joking but it's a headache.

As an old timer I have been licensed '56' years and weaned on power meters of all kinds and owning a company who designed and manufactured PCB's for industry mainly the UK Electricity Board think my soldering skills should be better than best, Have always used commercial dummy loads present one a 400watt 50 Ohm Marconi , I also think I may have said enough.

It is something to do with the actual radio OR something a previous owner has done to it to achieve a NOVICE output but what, who knows ?? I have tried to open it to see if a screwdriver expert had been fiddling but cannot see how to without difficulty it ain't a simple screw job.

I may be wrong but from memory the programming only allows you set the channels to HIGH/MIDDLE/LOW. There is no further option to allow the setting of what HIGH/MIDDLE/LOW. In my hunting it did find a review reporting a 33% lower power than advertised on a a 2m Anytone radio and it was just as it it. I'm sure there is a way around the menu but it's not (as I recall) using the generic Anytone software.

Yes, that’s the software I was thinking of but if you look midway along the XLS you see it says HIGH under TX POWER. I’m pretty confident that this is defaulted to LOW/MIDDLE/HIGH there is no option within the software to define the parameters of each.

I may be wrong but from memory the programming only allows you set the channels to HIGH/MIDDLE/LOW. There is no further option to allow the setting of what HIGH/MIDDLE/LOW. In my hunting it did find a review reporting a 33% lower power than advertised on a a 2m Anytone radio and it was just as it it. I'm sure there is a way around the menu but it's not (as I recall) using the generic Anytone software.

There is a small exe file for this radio that expands the power settings, it’s independent of the programming software. It’s named something like SeTupPow. Same goes for some other radios like Team Mico VHF, UHF and a few more.